Preach it:
Rep. Beto O'Rourke charged Thursday that racism is a factor in Trump administration policy leading to the detention of children at the border.
"This is a President who has called those asylum seekers, some of those asylum seekers, animals," the Texas Democrat said. "He's talked about this as an infestation. He's described immigrants from Mexico as rapists and criminals. ... There is a strong racist element to this policy."
O'Rourke, in an interview on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer," said he was concerned about the lack of information the administration had provided on children it is separating from parents who have crossed the border illegally.
He described a visit to a border patrol station in McAllen, Texas, last week and said that when he asked a border official if they could track children after they went into the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the official said, "We don't know."
"They are not answering any of our questions," O'Rourke said of the federal government. "We are asking, for example, where are the girls? When I go to these detention centers and these processing centers, I see a lot of young boys. I don't see the girls. They won't tell us where they are."
Beto also called out Trump’s bull shit on this:
President Donald Trump reversed himself on Wednesday, signing an order to keep more families together at the border as anger grew over children taken away from parents, and on Thursday, the Justice Department asked a federal judge to modify a court order limiting officials from detaining children for more than 20 days.
O'Rourke said the move underscored the intent of the administration and the possibility it would go back to the practice, if it were not able to modify the rule stemming from Flores v. Reno.
"This shows you how malicious this President's intent is because what they've promised is if they are unsuccessful in this challenge to Flores, then they're going to go back to separating families," O'Rourke said.
By the way, Trump has given Beto a real issue here to use against Ted Cruz. The New York Times highlights how Trump has made Cruz’s life a complicated living hell:
For now, Mr. Cruz is still considered a solid favorite for re-election, but a swell of anti-Trump activism, even in this signature Republican state, has raised the degree of difficulty. Representative Beto O’Rourke, his Democratic opponent, has outpaced him in fund-raising and attracted wide-scale media attention. And that was before the Trump administration’s policy of separating immigrant families at the border became the latest minefield in the race.
Mr. Cruz had initially defended the approach, calling the images of despairing children “heartbreaking” but adding that “illegal immigration produces human tragedies.” After reversing himself in his legislative proposal — and hearing Mr. Trump’s dismissive response on Tuesday — Mr. Cruz defended his plan as “a lot more than just judges.”
Democrats have focused on a piece of Mr. Cruz’s bill stipulating that asylum requests be heard within 14 days — insufficient time to prepare a proper case, critics say. Mr. O’Rourke, who called the family separations “torture,” seems likely to keep immigration policy central to his campaign.
“This is America right now,” Mr. O’Rourke said last weekend outside a temporary facility for children, before hinting at his own run. “We get to decide which version of America we are.”
And Beto has been already firing up the base:
O'Rourke, with an intense following and pronounced charisma, is tagged as the savior for Texas Democrats out of power and long mired in the political wilderness.
So far he's up to the challenge, outpacing Cruz in fundraising by $4 million in the last quarter and electrifying Democrats like no other candidate on a Texas ballot since Barack Obama.
"Beto has achieved a level of excitement that I haven't seen with a Texas candidate in my adult life in politics," said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, a Democrat who is working with O'Rourke on voter turnout strategies in Dallas County. "He's not only exciting Democrats, but he's been successful in appealing to independents and Republicans."
O'Rourke, sitting atop the statewide ticket, is the main attraction at this week's state Democratic convention in Fort Worth. His much anticipated speech Friday and related appearance in the Dallas-Fort Worth area are designed not only to fire up the Democratic base, but portray him as a unifying candidate with sway with voters throughout Texas.
Though party conventions are often ultra-partisan affairs, O'Rourke says his campaign is more substantive than the D beside his name on the ballot. He wants to be Texas' Senate candidate.
"You cannot be too young. You cannot be too poor," O'Rourke said during a recent stop in Dallas. "You cannot be too much of a Republican, you can't be too blue of a Democrat, too much of an independent. You can't be in prison for too many years, you can't be too undocumented to be worth fighting for. It is for everyone."
In order to beat Cruz in November, O'Rourke needs a huge turnout from Democrats, particularly in the urban areas they dominate. But he also needs to perform well enough in suburban and rural areas controlled by Republicans to upend the incumbent. Given the deep partisan divide in Texas, he'll have to be careful this weekend not to appear too steeped in Democratic Party concepts that Cruz has already charged are too liberal for Texas.
We have a real shot to pull this off and we have to keep up the momentum for Beto. Click here to donate and get involved with Beto’s campaign.